Monitoring the epidemiology and antifungal resistance of yeasts causing fungaemia in a tertiary care hospital in Madrid, Spain. Any relevant changes in the last 13 years?

Updated analysis on yeast isolates causing fungaemia in patients admitted to a tertiary hospital in Madrid, Spain, over a 13-year period.We studied 896 isolates associated to 872 episodes of fungaemia in 857 hospitalized patients between January 2007 and December 2019. Antifungal susceptibility was assessed by EUCAST EDef 7.3.2. Mutations conferring azole and echinocandin resistance were further studied, and genotyping of resistant clones performed with species-specific microsatellite markers.Candida albicans (45.8%) was the most frequently identified species, followed by the Candida parapsilosis complex (26.4%), Candida glabrata (12.3%), Candida tropicalis (7.3%), Candida krusei (2.3%), other Candida spp. (3.1%), and non-Candida yeasts (2.8%). Rate of fluconazole resistance in Candida spp. was 4.7%, ranging from 0% (C. parapsilosis) to 9.1% (C. glabrata). The overall rate of echinocandin resistance was 3.1%. Resistance was highly influenced by the presence of intrinsically resistant species. Although the number of isolates between 2007 and 2013 was almost two-fold higher than that of the 2014-2019 period (566 vs. 330), fluconazole resistance in Candida spp. was greater in the second period (3.5% vs 6.8%; P 0.05). Resistant clones were collected from different wards and/or time points, suggesting no epidemiological links.The number of fungaemia episodes has been decreasing over the last 13 years, with a slight increase in the rate of fluconazole resistance and stable echinocandin resistance. Antifungal resistance is not the cause of the spread of resistant clones.